Microsoft blasts IBM in open letter over Office XML

Microsoft has aimed a shot across the bow at IBM, charging that the company …

Microsoft has issued an open letter on interoperability, adding fresh ammunition to the battle of words between those who support Microsoft's Open XML and OpenOffice.org's OpenDocument file formats.

In the letter, Microsoft talks about how the company has pushed for greater interoperability than in the past, highlighting specific examples: the launch of the interoperability Executive Council and the Interoperability Vendor Alliance, collaborative work done with Novell and JBoss, and their moves to make Open XML an open standard with the ECMA.

Microsoft has strong words for IBM, which it accuses of deliberately trying to sabotage Microsoft's attempt to get Open XML certified as a standard by the ECMA. In the letter, general managers Tom Robertson and Jean Paol write: "When ODF was under consideration, Microsoft made no effort to slow down the process because we recognized customers' interest in the standardization of document formats." In contrast, the authors charge that IBM "led a global campaign" urging that governments and other organizations demand that International Standards Organization (ISO) reject Open XML outright. In the ECMA vote on whether or not to adopt Open XML as a standard, IBM was the lone dissenting vote in a group of 21 companies and organizations.

In a statement given to Ars Technica, a Microsoft spokesperson went even farther in criticizing IBM:

"Microsoft has determined that it is important to shine a bright light on IBM's activities that will have a negative impact on the IT industry and customers, including taking concrete steps to prevent customer choice, engaging in hypocrisy, and working against the industry and against customer needs," said the spokesperson. "Microsoft will continue to be public in identifying the ways that IBM is trying to prevent customer choice."

Is the battle between Microsoft and IBM over document standards simply a battle of marketing messages, or is there more substance behind the conflict? While some folks are eager to paint the choice between Open XML and OpenDocument as an epic battle for the future of document supremacy, it is important to temper the excitement with a little dose of reality. By merely including Open XML as the default file save format for Office 2007, Microsoft has ensured that it will become the predominant XML file format. An estimate by Corel last March found OpenOffice.org and StarOffice—the office suites on which the OpenDocument format was based and the first to implement it— to have a market penetration of less than a 0.3 percent.

So the issue is clearly not just about which office suite and which file format will become the winner. Instead, the issue Microsoft wants to clear up is one of public perception: the company really wants to be known as a supporter of open standards and interoperability. Why would Microsoft (or IBM, for that matter) care about such a thing? Not out of a sense of global well-being or the betterment of humanity through openness. The fact is that the computing world continues to become more and more interconnected, and companies are demanding that the software products they purchase are capable of integrating into larger systems. XML is a good method to achieve this goal, which is why Microsoft has been promoting XML in many of their products over the last few years.

Open XML, which should really be called Office XML but isn't for marketing reasons, has been criticized by proponents of OpenDocument for having various drawbacks, some real and some imagined. At first, some speculated that Open XML might contain secret proprietary binary bits, but such accusations have never been substantiated. A more legitimate charge was that the specification for Office XML—initially 2,000 pages and later increased to 6,000 pages after requests from the ECMA—is overly large and cumbersome to implement. However, as Open XML had to support all the features of Office 2007, a large size was inevitable. Claims that the spec is impossible for third-parties to support have so far proven groundless—in fact, longtime rival Sun started working on an Excel Open XML import filter for OpenOffice.org's Calc program.